The Damnation of Theron Ware eBook

“But there’s something else to talk about,
isn’t there, besides—­besides your
conscience?” she asked. Her eyes bent upon
him a kindly pressure as she spoke, which took all
possible harshness from her meaning.

Theron answered the glance rather than her words.
“I know that you are my friend,” he said
simply.

Sister Soulsby straightened herself, and looked down
upon him with a new intentness. “Well,
then,” she began, “let’s thrash this
thing out right now, and be done with it. You
say it’s hurt your conscience to do just one
little hundredth part of what there was to be done
here. Ask yourself what you mean by that.
Mind, I’m not quarrelling, and I’m not
thinking about anything except just your own state
of mind. You think you soiled your hands by doing
what you did. That is to say, you wanted all
the dirty work done by other people. That’s
it, isn’t it?”

“Oh, we were going to be frank, you know,”
she added, with a pleasant play of mingled mirth and
honest liking in her eyes.

“No,” he said, picking his words, “my
point would rather be that—­that there ought
not to have been any of what you yourself call this—­this
‘dirty work.’ That is my feeling.”

“Now we’re getting at it,” said
Sister Soulsby, briskly. “My dear friend,
you might just as well say that potatoes are unclean
and unfit to eat because manure is put into the ground
they grow in. Just look at the case. Your
church here was running behind every year. Your
people had got into a habit of putting in nickels
instead of dimes, and letting you sweat for the difference.
That’s a habit, like tobacco, or biting your
fingernails, or anything else. Either you were
all to come to smash here, or the people had to be
shaken up, stood on their heads, broken of their habit.
It’s my business—­mine and Soulsby’s—­to
do that sort of thing. We came here and we did
it—­did it up brown, too. We not only
raised all the money the church needs, and to spare,
but I took a personal shine to you, and went out of
my way to fix up things for you. It isn’t
only the extra hundred dollars, but the whole tone
of the congregation is changed toward you now.
You’ll see that they’ll be asking to have
you back here, next spring. And you’re solid
with your Presiding Elder, too. Well, now, tell
me straight—­is that worth while, or not?”

“I’ve told you that I am very grateful,”
answered the minister, “and I say it again,
and I shall never be tired of repeating it. But—­but
it was the means I had in mind.”